Drew's noise trick

Last week I posted a video of Drew doing his mouth trick where we flip his bottom lip as he makes noise. That video was pretty short and not representative of Drew's talents, so I decided to post this one as well. We really get a kick out of when Drew tries to do this on his own (that might be a later video). He can't do it very well, but he gets a lip flip in every couple seconds. It's so cute! Drew is talking more and more, especially around me and Jana, and he's getting much better at mimicking us.

da-da

Jana and I are starting to slip a little in our picture taking of Drew. We forgot to bring our camera to Grand Rapids for Thanksgiving! Drew was the star of the show this Thanksgiving as he is the only grandchild and the only great-grandchild in Grand Rapids. He didn't suffer from a lack of attention!

After all the Thanksgiving festivities our family was tired out. Jana and I are very firm about Drew not sleeping in our bed with us, but just this once Jana decided to let Drew take a nap with her. It was so much fun to watch my two favorite people sleep!

Last weekend Drew was having so much fun playing with me that I needed to pull out the camera to get some shots of him. He continues to love to play with his workbench. His new thing is to grab a "nail" (he's holding a red one) and then he'll put it in and out of one of the holes on the workbench. It's fun to watch him concentrate on getting the nail out and then lining it up again with the hole.

Drew likes to chat too while he's playing and here I caught him in the middle of saying something. He enjoys making an "arrrggghh" noise like a pirate.

One of Drew's classic favorite facial expressions is to stick out his tongue!

Jana came into the room while we were playing and here you can see the reaction from Drew upon seeing his mom. I think he likes her!

As Drew meanders all over the place and pulls himself up on everything, one of the places he has discovered to pull himself up is on a leg. Here he is grabbing onto my leg and pulling himself up to standing. It's so much fun to be sitting or standing there and all of the sudden feel his little hands grab your pantleg and start tugging.

Drew has been "talking" more and more and has even started to say "dada" when prompted. In the following video I had been encouraging him to say "dada" and then he started saying it on his own. Drew says "mama" too, but he hasn't caught on to that phrase as quickly as "dada."

sports weekend

This past weekend Drew and I watched the Michigan-Ohio State football game. I made sure that Drew was properly apparelled for the game! As you can see, he was pretty excited about watching Michigan football. Drew is looking toward our TV and watching as Michigan marched down the field for the opening touchdown. They ultimately lost, but Drew and I had a good time watching the game.

This past weekend we also took Drew to his first Spartan sporting event, a hockey game. You can't see it under his coat, but Drew is wearing his Spartan apparel to support the home team. Drew did very well at the game and managed to stay awake for the whole game. The Spartans even came through for Drew and won 2-0.

There is no special reason for this picture other than to show Drew's smile!

You can see that Drew's hair sticks up a little in the back in this next picture. He has two cowlicks that both send the hair to the middle of his head, which creates a mohawk effect. It is so cute! It looks a little like Dennis the Menace!

Another night, another dishwasher full of clean dishes to empty. Does a baby's work never end? :)

We have been continuing to read to Drew. Most often this is how the reading session ends, with Drew on the floor playing with the book.

We've been trying to catch Drew in action while crawling, but it is hard. He scoots around pretty quickly!

Last night Drew went for a fun ride on my shoulders. As you can see, he likes being on my shoulders just a little bit!

Drew's latest trick is that when we flip a finger up and down on his lower lip he'll make a noise and then listen as his noise changes pitch with each flip of the lower lip. Just watch the video and you'll get the idea! He usually does this for minutes at a time, but of course when the camera is out he clams up and won't do it for as long.

9 months already!

Jana and I cannot believe that Drew is already nine months old . . . and then I look back over the old posts on this website and I can't believe that he is ONLY nine months old because we have had so much fun with Drew. Drew is growing quickly and we have to keep reminding ourselves to enjoy each stage of his life!

Today Drew saw Dr. Turner for his nine month checkup and he continues to develop nicely. He is right on track for everything that babies his age should be doing. Yeah! With Jana's expertise in child development we were already pretty sure that Drew was "normal," but it was nice to have it confirmed by our pediatrician. Drew continues to rise to the top of the charts for height and he measured about 29 inches tall (75th percentile). He's now grown about 10 inches! He's of average weight and was slightly under 20 pounds. Drew has been doing a great job of growing!

Mobility increases!

It is always fun for us to go into Drew's room when he is waking up from a nap or a night's sleep to see what position he is in. Sometimes he is sitting there looking up at us. Sometimes he clearly does not want to get up in the morning and he rubs his eyes sleepily. Other times he is standing up at the rail of his crib, as is the case in this photo. He also finds the edge of the railing quite tasty! Now I know why modern cribs are made with safe paint that doesn't chip and can't be ingested by infants! When Jana came in Drew switched his attention from the railing to the camera cord. Look closely and you can clearly see Drew's two front teeth! They are visible now when he smiles, but hard to capture on camera. Jana did a great job of making them visible in this photo. I don't know if everyone who reads Drew's blog realizes this, but you can click on most of the pictures and get a larger image (it might help with seeing Drew's teeth).

We love to watch Drew stand and smile for us. He is such a happy guy!

Last night while I was unloading the dishwasher Drew came over and started to "help." After this initial time helping, whenever we open the dishwasher he immediately comes over, stands up, and then wants to reach in for the dishes.

Drew has reached another milestone: he officially crawls! He's been doing army-style crawling for quite a while, but last night he suddenly made the switch to regular crawling and wow has it ever increased his mobility. Before, he usually started crawling, did that for a few feet, and then switched to army crawling. Last night it was like he suddenly decided that wasn't fast enough for him, and so he decided to crawl. Here is some video of Drew crawling in the kitchen. Unfortunately, our kitchen timer went off during the video, so keep that in mind if you've got the sound on.

Drew's crawling has led him to some places that he hasn't been before. With his increased mobility I have been spending time putting covers on all our outlets, moving things out of his reach, and also installing safety locks on all our Drew-accessible cabinets. Last night Drew disappeared under our kitchen table then emerged behind his high chair and found something fun to bang on.

Another milestone for Drew that I haven't posted on yet is that Drew has started to eat real food (not ground up in his processor)! He has had some potatoes, fruit, cheese, meat, and maybe even a piece of potato chip from his dad! Not all the food is immediately successful. Last night Drew was eating some shredded cheese, pieces of sausage, and some bread. We just place the food on his tray and he feeds himself (a very messy process). There was a LOT of food on Drew and on his chair when he was finished! As you can see in this video, the bread was not the biggest hit.

responsible citizen

Last week Drew took time out of his busy schedule (napping, playing, eating, etc.) to head to the polls and vote. He was a big help with the voting process, although I couldn't find "dadadadada" anywhere on my ballot. We're hoping that Drew grows up to be a responsible citizen who votes! Even though I missed getting Drew's "I voted" sticker in this photo, I still thought it was cute enough to include in this post. Drew is leaning on one of his favorite toys, a box!

I think this photo is part of a peek-a-boo game with Jana. Drew gets really distracted by the cord on the camera, which is what I think he is reaching to grab.

Drew's new skill is that he can crawl over to just about anything and pull himself up to standing and then cruise very slowly along it. Every day he gets faster at doing this, and keep in mind that this video is already a few days old!

Drew loves to stand by our TV and DVD player because the table we have it on is the perfect height for him. This is not our favorite place for him to stand because he likes to bang on the DVD player and put fingerprints on the TV screen. As long as he doesn't do those things though, he is free to stand here as long as he wants!

Sometimes I have to tell him not to bang on the DVD player, which produces this look of innocence.

Drew has had this football for a while, but only recently has he been able to hold onto it with one hand. I am so excited! Now I can start teaching him to throw!

As many of you know, I do most of the cleaning around our house. I've been working on teaching Drew that it is very manly to clean the house, and he seems to be catching on quite nicely! I'm not sure what he managed to do with his sock.

Drew and I had a great time playing in our living room on Saturday. Look at that smile!

Drew's tricks often come and go depending on whether he decides to humor us or not. Here his tongue sticking out trick makes a reappearance.

On Saturday night we purchased Drew's first soccer ball. He hasn't learned to kick it yet, but Drew and I are working on rolling the ball back and forth. Drew immediately caught on, so my new game is sitting on the floor with him and "playing ball."

Yesterday after church I put Drew in his crib for his afternoon nap and he immediately grabbed his stuffed elephant and put his head on it like a pillow! It was so cute! I snuggled him in under his blanket and he fell asleep within minutes.

Last night Jana decided to make folding laundry a little more fun by putting Drew in the laundry basket again. It is the perfect Drew size!

Standing and more standing

I just returned from a conference in San Francisco, and I really missed being with my family! Both Drew and Jana got big hugs upon my return. While I was gone, I charged Jana with carrying on the photo capturing responsibilities. Therefore, most of this batch of pictures were captured by Jana in my absence. I hope you like looking through them as much as I did!

We are continually amazed by Drew's transformation from baby to little boy. Doesn't he look handsome in his sweater?
Drew has started pulling himself on EVERYTHING. Every time we turn around he has scooted over to something, gotten onto his knees, and then pulls himself up to standing. We have to keep an eye on him because not everything in our house is made for a little boy to pull on. Drew likes to pull himself up on his crib and on his changing table in his bedroom. It's really fun to watch him grib something and then puzzle out how he's going to make it from the ground up to standing. Drew has always enjoyed standing, but now that he can get to standing on his own he stands up all the time. He is also slowly getting more confident in cruising, but he still moves pretty slowly around the furniture.
Drew also pulls himself up on the laundry basket (with Jana supporting it), and then his favorite game is to pull out each piece of laundry. We haven't let him go into the kitchen cabinets yet for pans (the clothes are much less noisy! :)
Drew grabbed his blanket as a cape and started playing with his workbench. We sometimes keep the workbench on its side because otherwise Drew pulls himself up on it (and it's not set in place enough to keep from sliding when he's doing that).

Drew loves getting ready for a bath. He fusses while his clothes are coming off, but once he's naked he is a happy camper! Here he is standing at the edge of our bathtub getting ready to go in.
This is Drew's last bath in his little blue tub. It's so nice for bathing him by yourself, but he's getting too big for it!
On Sunday morning Drew crawled away from me and found his toolbench. When I came over to see if he needed a hand with hammering some nails he was pretty amused. I love that he enjoys his workbench so much. He will literally scoot across the room to play with it.
I was so happy to spend some time with Drew on Sunday morning before church. It looks like Drew was pretty excited to see me too!
I cleaned up our leaves this weekend, and before putting them into bags we needed an autumnal picture with Drew in the leaves. Jana hopped in too because we needed to make sure Drew didn't eat too many of the leaves :)
I know this picture is a little fuzzy, but I was amazed by how blue Drew's eyes are in this picture. We always get comments from people about how blue his eyes are, but it sometimes takes a photo like this for me to appreciate it myself.
Drew had his first "big boy" bath last night in the bathtub. He has graduated from his little blue tub! If you look closely, you can see drops of water on him that are from his incredible splashing. With more water around him, Drew took full advantage of the splashing potential. We are going to have to train him to do soft splashes! We thought about taking video of the splashing, but we were worried about him getting the camera all wet!